


remedy

by quidhitch



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Depression, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Post-Avengers (2012), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-04
Updated: 2019-03-04
Packaged: 2019-11-12 00:49:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18000644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quidhitch/pseuds/quidhitch
Summary: “I like the walls,” Steve shrugs, knocking his knuckles against the side as if to demonstrate. “Makes me feel covered.”A soldier in a fortress,Tony thinks, which is a pretty ridiculous thought to have about Captain America and his enormous limbs stuffed into a too-small bathtub, but there it is.Or: Tony Stark learns a thing or two about what it means to be In Recovery™.





	remedy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nasa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nasa/gifts).



> things to note about this fic:
> 
> 1) please mind the tags!!!!!!
> 
> 2) this fic is dealing with themes of suicide, depression, and mental illness. there's no one type of coping mechanism or recovery strategy that works for everyone - i've tried to craft here specifically what i think would work for tony.
> 
> 3) this is a fic focused on recovery, but recovery is often much more difficult and uglier than what is depicted. the tone of this is playful because i try to invoke tony's voice and i think tony uses humor to cope, but obviously this is very serious subject matter and i really really understand that. 
> 
> also this is for my love nasa💕
> 
> MIND THE TAGS EVERYONE!!!!! hope you enjoy.

It’s something people always say: the wind whistled.

Tony spends half his life in the air and he knows that, logistically, the wind does produce a sort of high-pitched sustained note, but he still hates the turn of phrase. Whistle's just too hi-ho-to-work-we-go, too frail for the stomach-dropping feeling of wind in his hair, skin that stings from the cold, and a jaw locked in concentration. Right now, when he’s standing on the roof of his tower in a suit of a different kind, with fingers clasped loosely around a bottle of whiskey—

The strange, haunting urge to jump nudges at his throat—

— And the wind _sings_.

He tips the bottle against his lips, the combination of the burn of the alcohol and the whipping air bringing tears to his eyes. The drop doesn’t look so long, from where he’s standing, and he thinks it wouldn’t be any different from all the other times he’s almost died while plummeting at an alarming speed through the open air. Jumping in the actual suit, of course, would make for a far easier clean up. He pities the poor Stark Industries intern who’d have to scrape his remains off the sidewalk and throw ‘em in an urn for Pepper.

The morbidity of that thought doesn’t quite manage to sink in before there’s the sound of the terrace door opening, and someone cursing behind him. Tony whirls around — too fast, fast enough that he could easily lose his already precarious balance — and squints through the darkness.

It’s— Steve, looking discomfited and tense, his navy dress jacket lost somewhere and his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows. He runs a hand through his hair and takes a long pull of frozen wind, then reaches into his pocket and supplies— well, it looks like a cigarette. And maybe a lighter.

“You smoke?” Tony blurts, before he can convince himself it’s a bad idea.

Steve freezes in place and looks up, face suddenly washed out in the red light from the open doorway. His features dissolve into abject terror as he realizes where exactly Tony is and what he seems to be doing, and before Tony can fully comprehend what’s happening Steve has crossed the space between them, wrapped an arm around Tony’s waist, and yanked him firmly away from the edge.

Tony braces his hands on Steve’s chest as if to push him away, but then his drunk brain registers the feeling of Steve pressed against him as _nice,_ and the urgency of that movement promptly dissipates.

“What the hell were you doing?” Steve whispers, voice somehow soft and cutting at the same time. His eyes are big, so much bigger than they normally are.

“You smoke?” Tony repeats, trying to somehow take a drink from the open bottle without pulling away from Steve. It doesn’t work — Steve snatches the bottle out of his hand and steps back anyways, placing it gingerly on the ground.

“They used to tell you smoking helped with asthma,” he says dismissively. His hand twitches, like he might reach for Tony, but the newly realized distance between them remains fixed. “Tony, I need to know why you were—“

“I’m drunk.”

Steve’s brows only draw further together, jaw tightening in tandem. “You’re drunk,” he repeats, voice dark and disapproving.

“I don’t know what I’m doing, I’m drunk,” Tony repeats. It’s a catch-all, and it comes with the added bonus of being short, succinct. Tony doesn’t trust himself to say more, right now, because saying more would mean he’d have to think about it more, and he’s pretty actively avoiding that at the moment. And Steve is blessed with super-sobriety, right? So he doesn’t know anything about being wasted. He should accept Tony’s explanation and promptly fuck off. “I’m going back downstairs.”

Tony starts in the opposite direction, expecting Steve to follow, but he doesn’t. Tony slows and glances over his shoulder, one eyebrow arched in expectation.

Steve is just standing there, that look of concern frozen on his face. “I don’t—“ he starts, sounding unsure of himself. “I don’t know if we should go back down there.”

Tony, who is absurdly inebriated and has way too many weird feelings about Steve to be around him right now, suppresses the urge to sigh deeply. “What?”

“I don’t think we should go back down there,” Steve says, this time with a little more conviction. “You— you obviously didn’t like it.”

Tony turns around properly, folding his arms over his edge as a sort of defensive meanness rises in his voice. “And how did you come to that conclusion?”

Steve initially seems to want to shrink away from the sharpness in Tony’s voice, but he stands his ground, the set of his brow beginning to project that pesky unwavering determination so characteristic of Captain America.

“I don’t think you should go back down there.”

“Piss off, Steve.”

“No.”

_“No?”_

Steve still looks kind of scared, but he says it again. “No.”

“Whatever it is you seem to be implying, Captain, you should be very aware of the fact I don’t know you half as well as I need to for us to be discussing it. Now, we’re going to go back downstairs, and if anyone asks—“

“Maybe _I_ don’t want to go back downstairs,” Steve interjects, pivoting strategies so fast it nearly gives Tony whiplash. He looks far too proud of himself for having thought of it, and Tony, eye twitching, briefly considers pushing him off the roof.

“What do you suggest we do then?” he asks, head still fuzzy from the booze even as exasperation drives him ever-closer to sobriety. “What’s the star-spangled plan?”

Steve considers this for several dragging moments. Tony would reach for the bottle, but he can barely feel his own fingers in the cold. They flex uselessly at his side while Steve stands there and looks like he’s contemplating the fate of the universe, like he’s Nostra-fucking-damus or something.

“Well—“ he says, finally, and Tony raises an eyebrow.

 

* * *

 

Steve takes him to a bathtub.

Steve’s own bathtub, in his room in the tower, to be specific. It’s dry and clean and a dimly floral smell hangs from the walls. Steve really likes baths, but he feels guilty and over-indulgent whenever he takes them. Natasha has bought him a captivatingly colorful -- and, Tony might add, quite expensive -- array of specialized bath products in an over-the-top attempt to break him of his modesty. Based on the errant sparkles dotted across the rim, she must have managed some degree of success.

In any case, Steve climbs clumsily into the basin, fully clothed as he settles against the rounded floor. Then he looks up at Tony with expectant blue eyes, like he somehow expects him to do the same thing.

“No,” Tony snorts, and means to turn on his heel and walk out of there, but he chugged someone’s drink as they were passing through the crowd downstairs, and a second wave of inebriation has started to slow his reaction time.

Steve doesn’t say anything, just keeps looking at him with those eyes. They’re ridiculous, on a person. Tony has the stray thought that they belong by the stars or at the bottom of the sea.

He gets in the tub. Whatever. It’s not like he has anything better to do anyways.

It’s a pretty tight squeeze, two grown men in a finite space meant for people with slightly more normal proportions than Steve. By the time they settle, Tony’s legs are tangled up with Steve’s, and Steve’s hands are splayed along his calves, gradually moving towards his ankles. Tony thinks maybe Steve’s had a shot of Thor’s Asgardian Wonder Juice, ‘cause he’s not usually this tactile.

It feels nice. It takes Tony’s breath away, just a little.

“This is what you do to calm down?” Tony asks, and feels a small wave of affection at the thought of Steve leaving parties to just… come up here. And sit alone, twiddling his thumbs and waiting for everyone to leave.

“I like the walls,” Steve shrugs, knocking his knuckles against the side as if to demonstrate. “Makes me feel covered.”

A soldier in a fortress, Tony thinks, which is a pretty ridiculous thought to have about Captain America and his enormous limbs stuffed into a too-small bathtub, but there it is.

“It’s alright,” Tony confesses, after a minute.

The corner of Steve’s mouth tips into a tentative smile. “I think so, too. It was getting a little crazy for me down there.”

“Yeah?” Tony asks, head lolling against the edge. The marble feels nice against his feverish skin. He fixes Steve with a lazy grin, hand moving idly back and forth along his tie. “What happened?”

“Think one of the Foo Fighters licked my cheek.”

“No way! Which one?”

“That’s your question?” Steve asks. He looks and sounds tired, but he’s smiling, hand resting over the delicate bones in Tony’s ankle. The weight in Tony’s chest is still there, but it feels like someone has slathered rainbow frosting just on top of it. The effect is feeble, but marginally better than standing on the roof alone.

“You know,” Tony starts, cutting himself off with a yawn. His eyelids feel heavy, and he realizes that he might look even tireder than Steve does. “Lots of people would kill to get a cheek lick from a Foo Fighter. You could stand to be a little less uppity about it.”

“Sorry. Didn’t realize it was such an honor.”

“Well, now you know.”

“Now I know.”

They both go quiet for a bit, and Tony starts to think— yeah. Maybe this is nice. He can see the appeal. It’s peaceful, but not absolutely silent— he can still hear the faint thud and rhythm of the music outside. It’s warm, too, especially where Steve’s legs are pressed up against his. Throw a couple pillows along the tub floor and he could spend the whole night here.

“Can we talk about… I mean— should we talk about…”

Mm. Maybe he thought too soon.

“Not interested in that,” Tony says, but even though his eyes are fully closed he can feel Steve’s gaze on him, pressing against his neck and collar like a tangible weight that Tony can’t help but want to shake off. It’s been a while since someone was this inquisitive. After New York, everyone’s had their own shit to deal with; Pepper’s trying to run a company, Rhodey’s gathering intelligence on whatever it was Tony saw in space, and the Avengers are as scattered as they ever were, a semblance of a team on their best days and a group of near-strangers on their worst.

"Not everything has to be interesting, Tony."

Tony has an answer for everything — it’s a Stark trademark, practically written in his genetic code — but when he reaches for a witticism that’ll toss Steve off, he ends up clutching at air.

“Don’t know,” he mumbles finally, hyper-aware of the way 100% of Steve’s attention remains determinedly fixed on him. “I don’t know, Steve. I wasn’t going to jump.”

Tony waits for a response and the moment stretches long, lost in the hazy warm air of the bathroom. The vague floral scent of the tub is stronger as Tony tips his head to the side, but it’s not enough to distract from the fact that Steve is suspiciously silent.

Tony opens one eye to look at him.

“Maybe you weren’t gonna jump,” Steve starts, though he doesn’t look particularly convinced of that, “but you weren’t exactly stepping back, either.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

“Doesn’t really matter if it means you end up dead.”

And that feels like a gut punch — because maybe Tony hadn’t quite realized or processed it yet, that that was what he was thinking about while standing on the ledge of a heart-rending drop. Had he really wanted that? To die?

 _Maybe_ , is the immediate answer his head supplies, and the aforementioned rainbow frosting starts to cloud over. Tony shuts his eyes tighter and sighs, wondering why the tops of his cheeks suddenly feel wet. Is the bathtub on? He’ll ask Steve later.

The next time Tony’s eyes flutter open, time seems to have jumped forward, and it slowly registers that someone seems to be lifting him out of the tub, an arm supporting the crook of his knees and another wrapped reassuringly around his back. Tony has the fuzzy thought that he might want to protest, but, just like on the roof and in the tub, the contact feels ridiculously nice. How long had it been since someone touched him like this— held him like this?

“Where are we going?” Tony mumbles, head tucked against Steve’s chest.

“Bed.” When Steve talks, Tony can feel the vibrations against his cheek.

“ _Oh_.” Tony opens his eyes just wide enough to successfully convey suggestiveness. “Good idea.”

“Shut up,” Steve says, then wrinkles his nose a little, and Tony can practically hear his own self-disapproval at having resorted to such childish comeback. Tony prides himself on being able to bring even the most unflappable of national icons down to his level of pre-school level repartee. “Go back to sleep.”

Tony wants to be intentionally contrary about it — stay awake just to spite Steve, who has been right about way too many things this evening already — but his body starts to betray him almost immediately. By the time Steve is settling him against soft blankets and pillows, he’s already halfway to a dream.

 

* * *

 

Brunch with Rhodey is a sacred ritual.

The first of these momentous events occurred during the third week of their first year at MIT, when Tony had passed out outside Rhodey’s dorm in a tutu and a jersey, slept on his mat the whole night, and somehow coerced a hangover breakfast out of him the next morning. They had gone to Pat’s, a dingy little diner fifteen minutes outside of campus, and it sort of became their spot. Whenever one of them was stressed or fucked up or just sorely in need of the other’s company, they’d make time to go gorge themselves on whipped cream and crappy burnt coffee.

A lot of things changed post-graduation, but they’ve always tried to get brunch when they’re in the same city. They have a running joke, now, that they’ve never been able to find a place that serves pancakes just as terrible as Pat’s. These get-togethers have been steadily declining in frequency over the last few years, but there’s not a lot either of them can do about that.

(That’s a lie, actually. Tony’s proposed many, many times, and Rhodey’s said no, which means he’s thinking about it, so anything’s possible.)

“—This is something you’ve always done,” Rhodey tells him, point blank, no anesthesia.

Tony, who was in the middle of his third and a half rant about Steve’s weird, geriatric habits, freezes and raises an eyebrow. Rhodey has this deadpan expression on his face, the one that means Tony’s missing something that should be really obvious to someone who’s supposedly this smart.

“Explain.”

Rhodey sets down his fork. “Senior year of MIT. The last few months leading up to graduation, when you didn’t know if I’d be taking fellowship opportunities abroad or enlisting or planning to keep you at all in my life—“

Tony’s rolling his eyes and looking out the window, now, but even a mention of that time makes his heart clench a little in his chest.

“—you started picking fights. You started finding things to hate about me.” Rhodey shakes his head, mouth settling into a vaguely rueful smile. The effect is only slightly lessened by the fact he has a little whipped cream on his nose. “I knew what you were doing so I didn’t let it bother me. I just tried to show you I was sticking around, and eventually you seemed to realize that, and you stopped.”

“So, what?” Tony asks, taking a sip of coffee and trying, possibly in vain, to pretend that Rhodey hasn’t just come for his whole life and family with his exposé. “You’re saying all this annoying shit Steve does isn’t actually annoying? I’m manufacturing it in a pathetic effort to— to test the strength of our friendship?”

“I’m saying that you should just accept that the guy cares about you and wants to be there for you, if he can,” Rhodey says, leaning back in the booth and folding his arms over his chest.

He looks soft and tired and Tony can almost feel a specter of their younger selves haunting the booth, talking about midterms and girls and how totally over jargon-y academic writing they were, pretentious as hell even if they’d never admit it now. It’s maybe a romanticization of an actually considerably rocky period in Tony’s life, but he doesn’t really care. If there’s one thing in his life worth romanticizing, it’s Rhodey.

“Okay, fine.” Tony says, flicking his sunglasses up over his head and smiling shamelessly at Rhodey. “I’ve accepted it. Can we talk about you now?”

“What about me?”

“I want to hear about your date.”

“I’m not telling you about my date,” Rhodey’s voice is firm, but there’s telltale amusement on his features, smile lines creasing around his eyes.

Rhodey’s saved by the arrival of their pancakes, stacked 6 inches high and slathered in things that would make Tony’s highly expensive cardiologist pass out. He and Rhodey dig in at the same time, chew in thoughtful silence, and exhale twin utterances of disappointment.

“Nothing like Pat’s,” Rhodey shrugs.

Tony shakes his head. “Nothing like Pat’s.

Tony spends the rest of the afternoon keeping the conversation carefully away from Steve, New York, and related stressors. He doesn’t tell Rhodey he got to the diner on time and was only late because he couldn’t muster the energy to get out of his car. His shades are tipped over his face so Rhodey can’t see the circles under his eyes, and he chugs three cups of green tea to mask the fact he hasn’t brushed his teeth.

At the height of their friendship, Rhodey would’ve seen clear through Tony’s half-assed array of cover-ups. He’s not sure if he’s relieved or disappointed, that it’s gotten so easy to lie to his best friend.

 

* * *

 

Tony’s been on the edge of these little episodes so many times that he should really see them coming from a mile away, but he’s always deluding himself into believing he has it under control.

The dark nothingness of space, the rapidly shrinking hole, the weightless feeling of the drop— sometimes, they’re the first things he thinks about when he wakes up. And he spends the rest of the day trying to pull himself out of it, to focus on work, to forget whatever it is he saw up there and to finally move on. He does paperwork. He attends meetings. He flirts with baristas. He plays at normal even though it stretches his energy thin, makes nearly everything feel like a chore.

And at the end of the day, he hopes that he’s tired himself out enough to fall asleep the second his body hits the mattress— but it is, unfortunately, never that easy. Now that there’s nothing in his hands to distract him from what’s been lurking in his periphery all day, all that panic moves front and center. Whether it’s concern for the fate of the universe or the horrible, sinking feeling that he’s not going to be able to fix this— the notions are suddenly and utterly immovable.

They crystallize into a weight in his chest that makes his breath short and his shoulders tense. Before he even realizes what’s happening, he’s caught in this ever-pessimistic spiral of thoughts that ends in the entire world going up in flames. Try as he might, he can’t seem to get ahold on rational thought, to take refuge in the kind of clear-cut logic he’s depended on his whole life.

He knows he needs to breathe. He knows he needs to snap out of it. But every time he reaches for one of his coping mechanisms (each varying in effectiveness and general healthiness), it’s like he’s moving through molasses.

This happens to him at least once a week these days. It’s exhausting, but manageable. He’d have worked his way through this one just fine, except—

Except.

He left the door to his bedroom cracked open and there are blue eyes staring at him from the sliver of space.

“Tony?” Steve asks, tentatively rapping his knuckles on the door, because Captain America is always courteous.

Tony doesn’t respond, just stares at his toes and tries to remember how to breathe at a pace most humans would deem normal. He has the distant thought that he should give Steve a thumbs up or something, but it’s lost, lost like everything else is in the crushing vacuum of space.

Steve comes inside and sits on the bed next to Tony, like this is normal, like they’ve been friends their whole lives.

“Is there anything I can do?”

Tony means to say “no”. Tony means to say “leave”. Tony actually says—

“Tell me something.”

And Steve, after a couple seconds’ thought, starts stumbling his way through a story about the USO girls putting him in makeup and teaching him how to pop his hip on beat. Unfortunately they never did find a skirt that fit him quite right, but that didn’t stop Millie, the oldest one of the bunch, from asking Senator Brandt if he could spare the money for a costume that would fit her heavyset sister.

“We visited the 107th before it arrived, and that was when I— left my short-lived acting career behind.” Tony’s still looking at his knees, but he can hear the faint smile in Steve’s voice. “Millie’s still alive. She owns a distillery in the Scottish Highlands, if you can believe it. We email sometimes.”

The longer Steve talks, the more caught up Tony is by the story instead of his own thoughts. It’s not the image of Steve in makeup and a skirt that distracts him, really, though that’s compelling enough that he’ll be considering it further at a later date. It’s more the thought of Steve in a dressing room surrounded by a group of pretty, perfumed, whip-smart women that he clearly had no idea how to talk to, laughing, blushing, and just generally making a fool out of himself because he knew it’d make them laugh.

Also, Tony wants to see if he remembers how to twirl and shimmy to the tune of Star Spangled Man.

Steve eventually runs out of things to say, but by this point Tony’s breathing has evened out and he’s no longer carrying a decade’s worth of tension tight in his shoulders. Steve reaches for his hand slowly, like he’s giving Tony ample opportunity to shift away, but Tony just curls his fingers around Steve’s in resigned acceptance.

“How often does this happen?”

Tony doesn’t answer.

“If it’s— if it’s often, I think you should start calling me.”

“Okay,” Tony says, even though he has absolutely no intention of doing that.

It’s a testament to how much he initially underestimated Steve, that he doesn’t seem to believe Tony in the slightest. He bites his lip like he’s thinking about something. His hand is still folded protectively over Tony’s.

“What if I called you, too?” Steve says, voice still careful, like he’s navigating a space covered in broken glass. “And maybe we don’t— we don’t even have to talk about what we’re feeling. We can just be each other’s distractions. You know?”

Once Tony gets over the fact that this all reads a little like a setup for a really bad porno, it doesn’t sound like a _completely_ terrible idea. He’d rather pitch himself off the top of the tower than admit he’s been feeling a little less like himself lately, but that’s not really what Steve’s asking for. Tony pictures it: he calls Steve and breathes heavily on the phone and Steve manifests wherever Tony is, armed with a story of how he did something dumb that one time. Instant Captain America, Just Add Trauma!

It sounds doable.

“Maybe,” Tony says.

Steve holds his hand a little tighter.

 

* * *

 

Tony Stark goes through therapists like Larry King goes through wives.

He had his first when he was 13 years old, and by the sixth session Tony had gotten poor Dr. Foster to cry. That man spent countless hours listening to the depraved fantasies of New York’s upper crust for the better part of the century, and Pre-Pubescent Tony, a protege in every sense of the word, had successfully driven him to retirement.

A string of unsuccessful one-off appointments followed until he’d mentally, emotionally, or professionally scarred the top fifteen psychiatrists in the tri-state area. He then moved on to a brief reign of terror in Malibu, where Pepper conned him into attending exactly one appointment set up by SHIELD Medical, which ended in the recommendation that he never, ever be put on permanent payroll.

“She just never got to know you,” Steve says, looking at Tony over the top of the honest-to-god physical newspaper he insists on getting delivered to the tower, “ _I_ said silly stuff about you before I knew you.”

Tony doesn’t even bother with a deadpan ‘uh-huh’.

Anyways, the point is, Tony and therapists go together like sandpaper and bare ass, so when he sees Pepper’s scheduled an appointment with a Dr. Burford this weekend, he promptly deletes it.

Unfortunately, Pepper is an actual witch with a sixth sense, so she clocks it and calls him within the hour.

“Stark Family Den of Iniquity, this is Tony speaking.”

“You should really start answering your phone with an iota of professionalism, you know.”

“Did you call just to lecture?”

Pepper heaves a slightly staticky sigh on the other end of the line, and Tony can vividly picture her left eye twitching. “Why did you cancel the appointment I made for you? On the seventh.”

“Because you know I think therapy is bullshit.”

“Yeah, but this isn’t talking therapy. You really think I’d work for you for years and try to send you to _talking_ therapy?”

 _Point_ , Tony thinks.

“It’s massage therapy.”

Tony wrinkles his nose. “Like naturopathy? You actually think that shit works?”

“It’s science, dimwit. Take the appointment - people say Dr. Burford is an absolute genius.”

“Is she hot?”

“ _He_ is very handsome and happily married. I’m putting the appointment back on your calendar.”

“Yeah, whatever.”

The thing is— Tony knows Pepper’s too busy to actually strongarm him into going. His features twist into a self-satisfied smirk and he throws his legs up on his desk, resolving to blow it off when the date arrives. And he has every intention of doing that until—

Until, the Avengers take down a HYDRA base in the rural south, and Tony flies deadstick for the first time since New York.

It’s nobody’s fault. The specs of the armor are too easily accessible - HYDRA got ahold of the right frequency to scramble the energy from the arc reactor. They had to hit him dead in the chest three times before getting the whole suit to power down. Tony should pass out - he keeps praying he’ll pass out - but there’s too much adrenaline thudding in his chest. He thinks he shouts for someone, and he only drops for half a minute before Thor gets an arm around his chest.

He just— wants the damn suit off him, and he’s yelling that like some sort of maniac, and then Steve’s ripping the armor into its constituent pieces with his bare hands. It’s terrifying, but once the chest plate falls away, Tony can finally breathe.

Thor’s doing something with lightning in the background, Tony feels the thunder in his bones. Steve’s clutching his arms and asking him something. _Are you okay, Tony, what’s going on, what happened?_ Tony doesn’t say anything in response, just holds him for support and tries to get control of his breathing.

So, yeah. That happened. Whatever.

Coincidentally, his appointment with Dr. Burford is the next morning. He takes it half because a massage sounds really fucking nice, and half because he’s trying to get away from Steve’s relentless fussing. Tony doesn’t get a wink of sleep that night, and during breakfast he feels skittish, cornered— his instinct is to recoil from Steve’s affection like a hissing cat. It’s embarrassing, to say the least, and not beneficial for the whole friendship schtick they’re on these days, so he has to get out of there.

It’s the first time he’s shown up to therapy without someone threatening to cut him off in the background. On time, no less - he can’t tell if the secretary’s more alarmed by this, or the fact he turns up in the lobby with half his shirt unbuttoned.

She leads him to a dark room that smells like one of Steve’s bath bombs. There’s a water feature with stacked up stones in the corner that stresses Tony out, for some reason. Dr. Burford walks in on him trying to yank the plug out of the wall.

“Don’t like the sound?” he asks, unfazed as he leans against the doorway. He’s effortlessly handsome - all dark skin, straight teeth, and perfectly placed dimples. Tony has a stray thought about the stability of his marriage that he doesn’t entirely regret.

“Is this the part where you ask me to take my clothes off?”

Dr. Burford doesn’t even twitch. “If you’re comfortable, Mr. Stark.”

Much to Tony’s relief, Dr. Burford maintains a steady stream of chatter, like he knows the silence will bother Tony more than the water feature. He asks Tony to lie face down on the table, makes no mention of the bruises along his sides, though, thankfully, carefully avoids the sorest areas. He starts out with a gentle touch, and Tony’s ability to speak kind of… drops off, as his hands dig deeper and deeper into Tony’s bunched up back.

God, he’s never been so aware of his own muscles. He can hear the sound of his own bones shifting and crunching beneath his skin. It’s dimly horrifying, but it’s a lot of other things, too. Tony abruptly feels like he’s going to start sobbing and never stop.

“Holy fuck,” he mutters, face still squished on the table.

“Mhm,” Dr. Burford hums.

 

* * *

 

When he gets home from the appointment, Steve is sitting on the floor outside the workshop waiting for him. He sees Tony approach and rises to his feet, sketchbook sliding off his knees and onto the floor next to him. He’s honest to god wringing his hands like some sort of nervous matron and looking at Tony with wide puppy dog eyes. Peed-on-the-carpet Puppy Dog Eyes, specifically.

“I know you don’t want to talk, and I’m sorry, I just wanted to make sure we were--”

Tony hugs him. It’s instinctual, even though he can’t actually remember the last time he hugged someone. He doesn’t know why he does it, really, it’s just that his body feels good and relaxed and _his_ for the first time in _months,_ and he still doesn’t want to talk, but maybe they can do this for a second instead.

Steve lets out a huff of surprise, body drawn unbearably tight even as he curls protectively around Tony. His hands rest light on Tony’s sides, mindful of the bruises from yesterday.

“We’re fine, Steve,” Tony tells him, smoothing a hand along the line of his shoulder and the bunched up muscles in his back.

He makes a mental note to talk to Pepper about access to Steve’s calendar.

And/or medical records.

 

* * *

 

Steve starts sleeping in Tony’s bedroom sometimes, and it’s not as big a deal as everyone makes it out to be.

It starts mostly by accident.  Tony is sitting on the bed pretending to do paperwork, Steve is sitting on the floor darning his socks. (Yeah, literally darning his socks. Tony has told him a thousand times that they can just buy him new ones or stronger ones, but Steve says it relaxes him, so whatever.)

Anyways, at some point Tony comes across a report marked up with Bruce’s indecipherable handwriting. He calls Steve over to discern if the sentence in front of him says “tick a witch, lick a fish, or bitch bitch bitch”.

Steve is no help, of course.

“That just looks like 6 slightly differently sized exclamation points,” he says, brow furrowed in patriotic confusion. His profile is so handsome. This observation is accompanied by a funny feeling in the pit of his stomach, but Tony wants to rub his face on Steve’s face about 90% of the time these days, so that’s easily brushed aside slash repressed along with his three thousand other inappropriate issues.

“You’re useless,” Tony smiles before his mouth stretches into a yawn.

“Not entirely. I could darn your socks,” Steve shoots back, voice dry and flat in a way that elicits a rough chuckle from Tony.

“Oh, statement retracted, then.”

“Figured you’d feel that way.”

Tony yawns again, and Steve fixes him with a look of painfully gentle admonishment. It’s a testament to how fucking nuts he is these days, that this makes his heart skip a beat.

“You should go to sleep, Tony.”

Tony makes an ambiguous sound and flops back onto the bed, throwing an arm over his eyes.

“ _You_ should go to sleep. Probably hours past your bedtime.”

Steve is suspiciously quiet, which makes Tony just slightly move his arm and open one eye in curiosity. Steve is looking at the patchy sock in his lap.

“—unless you aren’t actually the paragon of good behavior we all want to believe you are.”

“I don’t know where you guys got that impression in the first place. You know how many military enlistment forms I lied on?”

Tony smiles a tired, easy smile. “Eight?”

“Eight!”

They’re both silent for a few passing moments. Tony is hyper aware of the place where his ankle is nudging against Steve’s knee.

“I don’t sleep as well as I used to,” Steve says, voice injected with a forced type of casual that neither of them believe.

“Me neither,” Tony admits, because why the hell not. Somehow, Steve has conned his way into knowing nearly every mortifying thing about Tony, why shouldn't he know this, too? It's not like Tony has anything to lose, at this point. “I’ll be awake for hours, if I get to sleep at all.”

Steve grunts in agreement. Tony studies the lines of his face, shadowy and imprecise in the faded warmth of Tony's room. His hair has been rumpled out of that meticulously straight part and his lips are red where he's been biting them, which is something he does when he's focusing. He also, on occasion, makes a face which involves squinting and sticking the tip of his tongue through his teeth. Tony would really love to capture that one on camera one of these days.

“You’re welcome to stay,” Tony says, thoughtlessly, which is how he seems to be doing everything these days.

For a second Tony's confused as to why Steve's hesitating— because everything else he's thought Tony needed thus far has been given so quickly, so easily. It's only when Steve actually settles against the bed and starts gracelessly rambling about ranked choice voting that Tony realizes maybe something about this is different. Maybe it’s something Steve needs, more than Tony, even, and he didn't quite know how to ask for it. Based on the way his eyes seem to be drifting closed—even as he keeps talking—Tony thinks he might be right.

"You know we can do this whenever, right," Tony mutters, turning his head to look at Steve. His mouth stretches wide around another yawn and his eyelids feel unbearably heavy. He stays awake to stare. Steve’s lashes are long and soft against his face, features perfectly relaxed in a way Tony has never seen before.

It’s a face he’s gotten intimately familiar with, in the past couple months. He realizes with startling clarity that he _knows_ Steve, in a way he knows few other people in his life.

"Thanks, Tony," Steve exhales, barely a whisper.

Maybe Steve knows him back, too.

They only exchange idle, meaningless conversation for a sliver of a moment more before drifting off to their respective sleeps. Tony likes to think Steve's dreamscape involves mandatory pancake breakfasts, widespread democratic socialism, and at least double the amount of golden retrievers currently scurrying around the face of the planet.

(His own mostly involves robots.)

When Tony blinks awake in the morning, he realizes several things in slow, drooping succession:

1) He slept through the entire night, and he can count on one hand the number of times that's happened this month.

2) His bed smells really nice, like pine or something. Note to self - ask Jarvis about new laundry detergent.

3) Someone is holding his waist and breathing on the back of his neck.

Tony immediately expects to hate it because he's never been a little spoon kind of guy, even in his previous sexual escapades with men, but it's— well. Maybe it's different, because it's Steve. That frighteningly pale arm is familiar, he can take hold of it and trace the ridges of Steve's knuckles and know where they've been, where they're going to be.

They lay in bed for a while. It's nice and Tony thinks they both need it more than they're willing to admit. This slice of time in the early morning—when Tony keeps drifting between sleep and consciousness and it's too early for anyone to expect anything of them—maybe this can just be theirs. For now, at least.

After that, Steve shows up in his room two or three nights a week, hovering nervously by the door every time like he's not sure he's allowed in. They never have an actual conversation about it; Steve just happens to fall asleep there, they just happen to wake up in each other's arms, Tony just happens to have a slightly normal resting heartbeat for the rest of the day. It's probably easier that way. Plausible, deniability, and all.

What exactly they're denying exactly, he doesn't want to think about. Frankly seems like a problem for Future Tony.

 

* * *

 

Rhodey pours out all his booze.*

As it turns out, he can only lie to the man for so long. Even though he’s only catching Tony _after_ the crest of a very long and apparently never-ending arc of recovery, he doesn’t take his job as Responsible Best Friend any less seriously. Tony eyes the growing number of empty bottles at his feet with a growing combination of fear and—... well. It's pathetic, really, but fear and gratitude, because even if this whole situation is deeply unfavorable, it's also a sign that Rhodey cares.

He just wishes that caring took place far, far away from his liquor cabinet.

“Can’t we donate it to charity,” Tony says, clutching the Macallan ‘50 to his chest like a safety blanket. “There has to be a booze charity.”

Rhodey uncorks a bottle of wine with his teeth, makes direct eye contact with Tony, and tips it into the sink.

Tony resists the urge to whimper.

“Or you could just hold onto it for me! Until I’m—uh, better, or whatever. You can even drink some of it.”

Rhodey, maintaining his deafening silence, reaches for the vodka.

“Are you seriously silent treat-ing me? Where is this coming from? Have you been taking lessons from Pepper?”

“Put down the scotch, Tony.”

“Not until you talk to me.”

“ _Put down the scotch_ ,” Rhodey says, looking up from the stream of Vodka with angry brown eyes. Tony hates it when Rhodey’s disappointed with him; it makes guilt scratch at his throat and his gut twist up in untangleable knots.

“I think you’re blowing this entire situation out of proportion, let’s back it up a little, ‘cause I’m actually going to therapy and I think you’d be really—”

“No.”

“No?”

“No,” Rhodey says again, shaking his head, “just—no.” Something strains in his voice, something that makes Tony’s immediate retort wilt on his tongue. Rhodey’s eyes snap closed, he shakes his head, and he takes a steadying breath that quivers just slightly on the inhale. When looks at Tony again, his expression seals over with a kind of resolute determination.

“I haven’t been there for you,” he says quietly, and Tony immediately wants to interject, because no, no, no, but Rhodey doesn’t really give him the opportunity. “I didn’t realize you were— I didn’t realize how bad it was. You’re so resilient, Tony, I’ve seen you bounce back from things so quick before, and I just thought—” he cuts himself short, point dropping off into a frustrated huff. “And then I find out you had to get your _stomach pumped_?”

Tony tries not to wince at his cutting tone. He has the passing thought that he needs an emergency contact who doesn’t talk to Rhodey, but then he remembers Pepper would stab him with her stiletto if he swapped her for literally anyone else.

“You’re too old for that shit. And it hasn’t happened since our early twenties, since the years after your parents… anyways, I know something is wrong. And whatever, you don’t wanna tell me, that’s fine. I can’t control that. But you know what I can do?”

Rhodey tosses the empty vodka bottle into the bin by his feet, and it lands with a soft thud.

“Dump this out, ‘cause it sure as hell isn’t doing you any favors.”

Tony doesn’t know what to say. He wordlessly hands Rhodey the bottle of scotch. Rhodey drops it in the sink, drags Tony close by the arm, and wraps his arms tight around Tony’s shoulders.

“I’m sorry,” Tony says, fingers curling in Rhodey’s sweatshirt.

Rhodey pulls back, but his hands stay on Tony’s shoulders, firm and grounding. His eyes are fierce when he says, “I’m still mad, but it’s not always your fault, Tony. You know that right?”

Tony offers a halting nod, even though he isn’t sure he knows that at all.

*He and Rhodey pour out the booze together, and spend the rest of the evening on the roof, wearing sunglasses and drinking from glass Coke bottles with bendy straws in them.

 

* * *

 

He walks into the workshop one morning to find a truly massive bouquet of rich red flowers sitting on his desk. There are roses and poinsettia leaves and fuzzy grey willows. Tony’s first thought is that it’s some sort of evil scheme, and that if he takes a single step closer the flowers are going to blow up. He spends an inordinate amount of time frozen in the doorway.

“Captain Rogers dropped off the arrangement this morning, Sir,” JARVIS says from the ceiling. “He also asked me to inform you he’ll be spending the week in D.C.”

Tony approaches the flowers cautiously, walking in a slow circle around them before running the tip of his finger along the lines of a rose petal. It’s really soft. His workspace smells sweet, now. There’s no card.

“Is this a generational thing?” he mutters, half to himself. “Is this how guys our age used to hang out in the forties?”

“Define ‘hang out’,” JARVIS intones.

Tony tries to, and then promptly remembers the sky-high pile of incriminating evidence that may, to certain people and sentient AIs, give the impression that they are more than Guys Hanging Out.

“Oh, god,” Tony says. He can’t stop staring at the flowers and there’s a funny spreading warmth in his stomach.

“Indeed, Sir.”

 

* * *

 

Steve spends the week in D.C., and Tony spends his nights drifting in and out of sleep at random, frustrating intervals. For five days straight he’s been wide awake for the buzz of his alarm, has promptly silenced it, and spent the next four hours laying in bed doing nothing.

It’s not even just that he’s tired—he could pop three caffeine pills and be ready to go—it’s more that he just… doesn’t _want_ to. He can’t grasp at the passion or drive or will to do anything more than stare at the ceiling. He remembers feeling like this from time to time back in college, except everything’s worse now because he knows the safety of the entire universe depends on him getting out of bed.

Try as he might, he still can’t fight through the six layers of apathy between his fear and the will to actually do something. It leaves a bad taste in his mouth, and that’s not just from the sour post-taco-night morning breath.

On Steve’s last day in D.C., Tony wakes up at five in the morning to see Natasha Romanoff sitting on top of his dresser.

Her legs are folded beneath her and she’s taking slow, methodical bites of a granola bar. Her hair is plaited into a neat braid and she’s wearing workout clothes, yoga pants and a ratty t-shirt with something explicit in Russian across the tummy. (Tony only knows it’s explicit because Steve tried to look it up once and came up empty ‘cause his Google’s still on Safe Search.)

"Hey," she says, raising her granola bar in greeting.

Tony clutches his sheets to his chest in a manner vaguely reminiscent of a fainting Victorian maiden. "..Hhh....ey...," he says, which, out loud, sounds exactly as dumb as it did in Tony’s head.

Natasha rolls her eyes. "Don't look so scandalized. Steve's in here all the time."

"Steve doesn't own as many knives as you do."

"Not yet he doesn't. I bought him a basic tactical one for Christmas, he sleeps with it strapped to his thigh."

Oh. That was kind of hot.

"Is there something I can do for you?" Tony asks, because it's too early for literally every single part of this conversation. He rubs pointedly at his straining eyes.

Natasha's shoulder drops in an unassuming shrug. "Though we could spar."

Tony takes a moment to process this, because it seems like some kind of sick joke. As he considers, he notes that the blankets start to feel uncomfortably warm and the last vestiges of relaxation are draining rapidly out of his chest. Excellent.

"You want to spar."

"Mhm."

"With me."

"That's right."

"At five in the morning."

Natasha offers him a smile, small and sharp in a way that makes the hairs stand up on the back of Tony's neck. "No time like the present."

"Uh-huh," Tony says, blinking at her for several, long moments. She finishes her granola bar, crumples up the wrapper, and tosses it with scary-precise aim at the waste bin in the corner of his room. Tony tracks the graceful arc with tired eyes, and promptly decides he wants her hands nowhere near his funny business.

(If only Pepper could see him now. Maturity.)

“It’s gonna be a hard pass for me, on the sparring.”

Natasha raises one well-plucked eyebrow. “Oh?”

“Yeah,” Tony affirms, tugging his blanket over his shoulders and rolling onto his side. His bed is warm and the desire to sink into the aimless nothingness that seems to consume him on days like this is— overwhelming, to say the least. “Yeah, I’ll catch up with you later.”

Natasha says ‘alright’, and Tony can’t hear her actually descend from the dresser and leave, but assumes it happens anyways because she’s no longer talking. Assassins. He’d attach a bell to her neck if he didn’t think she’d find a way to garrote him with it.

He tries and fails to go back to sleep, ultimately just ends up laying on his back, staring at the ceiling, and resenting every single choice that brought him to this moment. Natasha conceded especially quickly, and Tony knows that that means…. something, but he can’t quite put his finger on what. He lays on his back and sluggishly attempts to puzzle through it, smoothing over the niggling reminders that he has things to do and people to see today.

His bed was warm and soft and still smelt a little like Steve. The rest of the world was the exact opposite in every single way.

Unfortunately, Tony’s sixth sense about Natasha’s request is legitimized minutes later, when he gets a phone call from Steve that brings together the pieces of his scattered thoughts. JARVIS patches Steve through, and, in lieu of a greeting, he says—

“Why don't you want to spar with Natasha?"

Tony buries his face in his goose-feather pillow and groans.

 

* * *

 

At first it’s deeply and profoundly terrible. Tony’s eyes strain against the harsh fluorescent lights in the gym, Natasha keeps trying to strangle him with her thighs, the whole area just smells like old tires for no apparent reason.

And then, about an hour into getting his ass very thoroughly comprehensively kicked, his mind starts to sharpen the way it used to— before… well, Tony doesn’t know. Before he started spending half his days in bed and the rest of the time getting panic attacks in the workshop.

He starts to anticipate Natasha’s moves, actually dodging her hits, managing to make a few of his own. He’s nowhere close to beating her, of course, but he sees things with a kind of renewed clarity that’s been out of reach these days, lost to a cloud of bad decisions and goose feathers.

“Hey,” Tony says, laying flat on the mat and wheezing, slightly. “Thanks.”

Natasha, who is lying next to him and also breathing the slightest bit harder than normal, turns her head to flash him a quick smile. And it’s not a creepy murder smile, either, it’s actually kind of sweet.

“How do you feel?”

“Injured,” he confesses, rolling his shoulders against the mat. “But also, like, awake. If that makes sense.”

“It does.”

“Cool.”

“Yeah. Cool.”

 

* * *

 

It’s Smash Day. A surprisingly less sexual annual tradition than it sounds!

Tony makes a lot of shit that doesn’t go anywhere, which is something people don’t really understand about science. For every revolutionizing piece of technology he creates, there are about ten other failed solutions he tried first. Sometimes the parts are reusable, sometimes even failed prototypes are worth saving, and other times--

Tony brings a sledgehammer down hard on the shell of a massive arm cannon, delighting in the contact that shatters it into its constituent pieces, the paint chipping and the metal skidding across the workroom floor.

Other times, he just needs to do this.

It’s therapeutic, has been since his MIT days. Superhero business isn’t actually the stress relief some might assume it is. When Tony’s hitting someone in the face with a repulsor blast, he’s too scared they’ll get back up again to, like, _really_ be satisfied. Smash Day is devoid of any of those anxieties— he just gets to break shit, scream sing AC/DC, and strengthen his core in the process.

The truth is, he’s been long overdue for a Smash Day these past several months. The thought of it started to exhaust him. He could barely find the motivation to finish his ongoing projects, let alone take apart his old ones.

The workshop was getting so crowded that he was heavily considering outsourcing his smashing, but this morning something seemed to shift. He woke up with Steve draped on top of him and snoring in his ear, and his whole body suddenly felt restless and ready, chock full of the kind of buzzing energy he’s sorely, sorely missed.

Part of the reason it’s back might have to do with the man currently sitting on his work bench right now, peaceably sipping a green smoothie and reading James Baldwin. Tony’s found that he doesn’t mind the noise, that that might actually be the first thing he and Steve have in common.

“Tony!” Steve shouts over the music, closing the book in his lap and looking up with a small, contented smile. He looks so serene, ironic in the surrounding chaos of the workshop. “Gonna get takeout from Wong’s Garden! You want anything?”

Tony gestures for JARVIS to turn down the music, just loud enough that Steve doesn’t have to shout.

“Yeah, um-- what the name of the spicy brown chicken Nat ordered last time? The one with the chilis, and you ate one and almost died?”

Steve thinks for a second. “I think it has Schezuan in the title?”

“Kay. Take my wallet, buy all the Schezuans.”

Steve nods in understanding, rises from the couch, and sucks down the last dredges of his smoothie. He drops the empty plastic cup in the trash and pulls open Tony’s work drawer, rifling through the items in search of Tony’s wallet.

As he looks, Tony stretches his sore arms out in front of him, shoves an arm up under his tank top to scratch at his shoulder. He’s been at this for hours and his entire upper half is damp with sweat. It should be gross but it’s kind of amazing. _Cathartic,_ some Therapist Voice that sounds suspiciously like Bruce says in his head.

When he looks back up, Steve is staring at him, Tony’s wallet clasped loosely in one hand, cheeks pink. It happens so fast that Tony could blink and miss it, but Steve’s wide blue eyes flit briefly up and down Tony’s frame, and the blush on his cheeks ratchets a shade deeper.

Tony pauses. _Did Captain America just check me out?_

 _I got my gun at the ready_ , _gonna fire at will,_ his speakers scream.

“Hey,” Tony says, because he feels like he should say something. His mouth feels a little dry. He licks his lips.

Steve gets even pinker.

Tony clears his throat to speak again. “You want a go?”

“Excuse me?”

Tony holds up the sledgehammer as if to explain. Steve’s eyes brighten in understanding, and whatever was clouding them seems to clear away. His gaze fixes on Tony’s hand, mouth twisting into a skeptical little line.

“S’pretty freeing,” Tony endorses, twirling the hammer in a lazy circle.

“What’s the objective?” Steve asks, still uncertain. “Just— break it? Do you break it in a specific way?”

Tony’s mouth twitches into a smile. “Nope.”

“What’s the point of that?”

“It’s fun, mostly. Makes it easier to melt down the scraps if I need to.”

Steve considers this, then tucks Tony’s wallet into the back pocket of his jeans and takes a tentative step forward. Tony passes him the hammer and Steve’s big hand closes around the grip, thumb brushing against Tony’s as he pulls away.

Tony clears his throat again and crosses over to his junk pile, selecting a misshapen Oil Sump and lifting it with a light grunt. He can feel Steve’s eyes on him as Tony lines it up in front of him, taking a step back and holding his arm out as if to say _all yours_.

Steve glances tentatively between the scraps and Tony.

“You can’t laugh,” he says.

“Why would I laugh?” Tony presses his fist against a smile.

Steve’s grip tightens on the hammer and he actually closes his eyes—squeezes them shut and lines up his shot like he’s a kid at his first baseball game. Amusement rises fast in Tony, and he starts to say “here, I can he—”

—But the rest of that syllable is lost to a slight yelp as Steve brings down the hammer, and the oil sump absolutely shatters, the pieces breaking apart and giving way to an honest to god _crack_ in the workshop floor.

Steve opens one eye to look at the mess, then opens his other eye and starts to smile. When he looks up at Tony’s shocked expression, he exhales a throaty laugh, whole faze seizing in joy. He lets out another peal of laughter, pressing a hand over his mouth like he’s surprised he could make the sound. His eyes are creased at the corners, practically shining behind long, sweeping lashes.

He’s the most beautiful person Tony has ever seen.

Tony’s laughing, too, now, staring at the crack in the floor like it’s the most ridiculous thing he’s ever seen. He steps through the mess and reaches for Steve’s shoulder, bracing one hand on him and pressing the other to his stomach, doubled over in hysterics as a stitch starts to form in his side.

“You closed your eyes!”

“I knew where it was!”

“Did you?” Tony asks, straightening up and looking at Steve with a smile that he’s certain is too wide for his face. Steve is looking at him like the word could be on fire outside, and he wouldn’t even care. “Did you actually, though?”

And then they’re kissing.

Steve makes the first move, clumsy and unprepared, their mouths coming together in an ungainly press that nearly throws Tony’s balance. Tony makes a sound of surprise against his mouth, but that quickly fades into something else as Steve’s arm circles around his waist, palm a comforting warmth at the small of Tony’s back.

 _Holy fuck_ . He’s kissing Steve. He’s kissing Steve! A thrill darts down his spine at the thought, and then he realizes he really needs to start reciprocating if he wants to _keep_ kissing Steve, so he tilts his head, places a hand on Steve’s cheek, and does just that.

They pull apart and Steve’s pink all over now, but he has the most pleased expression on his face, like he’s tricked Tony into giving up something extremely valuable. Idiot. Tony _wants to marry_ him.

“I love Smash Day,” he declares.

Steve lets out a breathy laugh, then seems to abruptly realize where Tony’s going and says, “Do not—”

“—Gonna smash this stuff, then I’m gonna smash _you_.”

Steve heaves a resigned sigh, but there’s laughter in his eyes, and he rubs sweetly at the base of Tony’s spine. “You real set on that order, Mr. Stark?”

Tony grins, shakes his head, and kisses Steve again.

Best Smash Day ever.

 

* * *

 

Tony used to think he was the only one who completely zoned out for about 75% of Official Avengers Meetings, but when they gather without Fury for the first time and patch him in via conference call, he gets exposed to the _truth_.

Clint has apparently trained himself to sleep with his eyes open. Now that Fury can’t actually see him, he’s abandoned all pretense and is snoozing openly on the couch, a line of drool hanging from the corner of his mouth. As he sleeps, Natasha paints the nails on his left hand 5 different colors. Bruce always gave the impression he was following the powerpoint on his tablet, but he’s actually just reading unrelated scientific journals on his tablet.

And Steve! Steve is possibly the worst out of all of them. All of those diligent notes Tony thought he was taking are just various doodles of the profile of whichever Avenger happens to be in his eye line.

Today he doesn’t bother with the paper and takes a marker to Tony’s forearm instead, tracing the lines of the Iron Man suit from memory. He manages a surprising amount of detail for someone working with Crayola. Tony uses his other hand to flip through Pepper’s most recent profit projections and catch up on celebrity gossip, but, truth be told, he spends more time watching Steve and the adorable little wrinkle that’s creased between his eyebrows.

“Concentration face,” Tony says softly, mouth tipping in a crooked smile.

Steve promptly looks up and scowls at Tony.

Tony exhales half a quiet, mocking gasp, “ _Scary_ face.”

(Coulson’s voice drones on in the background. At this point, whenever he opens his mouth all Tony hears is the teacher from Charlie Brown.)

“Hey, what are you doing after this?”

Steve’s marker doesn’t still as he ponders the question, still moving in light, ticklish lines along the inside of Tony’s wrist. “Running, maybe. Skyping with Sam.”

“How do you know how to use Skype?”

“JARVIS sets it up for me.”

“Hm. You two as friends is a real bummer.”

Steve looks up at Tony with a vaguely amused expression. “You could help me set it up,” he says, voice soft and casual. _Temptress_ , Tony thinks.

“Rhodey and I are liaising at 2, and I spar with Natasha at 6,” Tony lists off, “but— you wanna do a late dinner?”

“Yeah, sure. I think we have one of those frozen pizzas in the freezer, still.”

Tony tries not to laugh, but Steve has a sixth sense that alerts him whenever Tony’s making fun of him, so he picks up on it anyways. He looks up with questioning blue eyes.

“I meant like— out. Like a date.”

“Oh,” Steve says. The marker stills. The beginnings of a blush stain his cheeks, and he glances down at Tony’s hand, fingers smoothing lightly along the delicate bones of his wrist. Tony’s pulse flutters a little at the touch. “Yeah, I think that sounds nice.”

“Okay,” Tony smiles.

“Okay,” Steve says back.

They both go back to vaguely pretending to pay attention, but it’s a solid couple minutes before Steve starts drawing again.

 

* * *

 

It’s not like every fucked up thing about Tony just… _goes away_.

He’s never going to sleep quite the way he used to. He’s always going to get caught in spirals of anxiety when he’s least—or maybe most—expecting it. He doesn’t just get to stop massage therapy, he has to keep going and he has to let himself sob after every appointment because he knows he’ll feel like shit if he doesn’t.

Things get easier. They don’t go away, but they get easier. And his repertoire of Things expands, too, so it’s not just self-loathing and light alcoholism 24/7, which has been the Tony Stark Agenda for perhaps a smidge too long, if Dr. Burford’s knowing looks are anything to go by. Now Tony has Shawarma with the team and speaking at MIT commencement and making a point to see Rhodes every week and beating his terrible brain with a stick because it turns out he _can_ be loved. He _deserves_ to be loved. Sometimes, at least.

And there’s also Steve, Steve, _Steve—_  wrapped around him, swimming in his thoughts, making his bed smell good, and kissing every inch of Tony’s body even when he feels like the most disgusting, most repellent person in the world. Tony loves him so much he can’t stand to think about it for too long, or else he feels like he’s going to actually, literally combust.

Maybe it’s all going to go to shit. Maybe the world’s going to end to-fucking-morrow, but, as it turns out, that’s tomorrow’s problem _anyways_. He’s starting to realize that he can’t be spending all his time barreling towards death, because then he misses a little thing called Every Moment Worth Living For, which keeps happening in the background.

Tony stands at the edge of the rooftop, looks down at the city he’s saved a dozen times over, and remembers to breathe.

Maybe the wind does whistle, sometimes.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm on tumblr @ quidhitch
> 
> (1-800-273-8255 is the national suicide hotline, for anyone who might need it. 💖)


End file.
